


all my bags are packed, i'm ready to go

by The_Bisexual_From_Hell



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Drowning, F/F, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, I'm Sorry, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25702870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Bisexual_From_Hell/pseuds/The_Bisexual_From_Hell
Summary: Death was a funny thing. She has always been surrounded by it, she was born from it, she suffered from it, she watched it destroy the people she loved the most in this world. Eventually, she caused it. Josie Saltzman-death’s best friend.Josie is just so tired, she just wants a fucking break.
Relationships: Hope Mikaelson/Josie Saltzman
Comments: 4
Kudos: 93





	all my bags are packed, i'm ready to go

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this is bases on an idea sent to a gc, I based most of the depression and suicidal thought from when I was depressed and suicidal, so I'm sorry if it's not accurate, everyone has different experiences. Most of the things are mentioned in the tags but just in case. 
> 
> TW // suicide  
> TW // suicidal thoughts  
> TW // depression  
> TW // anxiety  
> TW // mental illness and health in general 
> 
> Please don't read if you find that triggering, a fanfic isn't worth your mental health.

Death was a funny thing. She has always been surrounded by it, she was born from it, she suffered from it, she watched it destroy the people she loved the most in this world. Eventually, she caused it. Josie Saltzman-death’s best friend.

It starts after Dark Josie is gone (she hates that name, it’s just Josie, Dark Josie was just Josie). At first, she doesn’t even notice- it starts slow. She gets tired more easily, she gets irritated more frequently. 

Naps become her best friend and she realizes she can’t feel anything anymore. Everything is numb. The world feels like she’s underwater and everything is happening outside. Everything is distorted-she can't make out what is happening around her. She is drowning and no one notices. 

She doesn’t blame them. It took her a long time to notice. The process was gradual- a drop of water falling from the cavern ceiling that slowly makes stalactites. It builds up; it’s a shock but not a surprise. 

Every night before she falls asleep, she lies in a bed next to her sister and wishes not to wake up the next morning. She prays for a crazy axe murderer to kill her in her sleep (she dismisses that idea fast, Lizzie could get hurt, and she’s hurt Lizzie enough). She hopes a stray bullet will fly through the window and hit her lung. She wants to be dead. Life would be easier that way. 

She tells no one. There really is no point in worrying anyone-they would all try to comfort her, make her feel better. They would try to take away her guilt, her responsibility, her accountability. Without them, she is nothing. 

Everyone has told her a thousand and one times that what happened with Dark Josie was not her fault, that Clarke had manipulated her, that it was the dark magic, that it was not her. They were wrong, because it was her; it had always been her. Dark Josie wasn’t any less Josie than Good Josie. 

They don’t know-not a single one has any idea of the things she did during her missing time. All of them believe she just caused chaos in the school. They have forgiven her for what she did to them. The people she killed and tortured and played with during her missing time aren’t alive to offer their forgiveness, and it’s not like she deserves it anyway. Ninety-eight people-that's how many lives she had ended. 

Hell, they don’t even believe what they are saying. No one can look her in the eye, no one except for Hope. 

Hope, who was good. Hope, who had been possessed by dark entities and forced to do their bidding before. Hope, who feels the need to serve a sentence, a penance for doings that aren’t her fault. Hope, the girl she is utterly and completely in love with. 

Hope is one of the few reasons Josie smiles these days-the real smiles, not the fake ones she uses to mask her numbness. It makes sense. The tribird has always done impossible things, so getting Josie to smile is nothing for her. 

Josie is a grain of sand in the desert that is Hope Mikaelson’s life and she knows it perfectly well. In the grand scheme of things, her life won’t mean much when compared to Hope. In thousands of years, when Hope is still alive and Josie is long gone, all Hope will think when they say her name will be ‘ _ I used to know that girl.’ _

Hope is an Original with capital O-she’s going to live forever, there’s not much that could kill her, and she has enough power to end the world if she wanted to. Josie feels it every time she siphons from Hope. It’s addicting, and she never wants to stop once she starts. She loves Hope and all she can think about when they touch is how badly she wants to bleed Hope dry of all her power. It’s another reason why she hates herself.

The truth is Josie hates herself for so many reasons, she doesn’t think she could name them all. Sometimes there isn’t even a reason. She just feels such repulsion when thinking of herself that she wants nothing more than to stop existing. 

The obvious solution to her problem is to hold on for a little longer, carry the weight of the world, of everyone's expectations, until she turns 22, then she could let Lizzie win the Merge. There is no loophole, no solution. Someone would have found it by now, and she has made peace with that. 

However, she knows she could never lose the Merge-it’s in her DNA to fight to win. No matter how much she wants to die, there is a part of her that will never let her lose. That would be embarrassing; magic is the only thing she is truly better at than Lizzie.

She is a Kai Parker in the making and she hates herself for it. 

What kind of person dreams about killing their sister. The scariest part is that Josie doesn’t know if it's a memory or a sick fantasy. 

She hates herself for all the horrible thoughts she has-the same horrible thoughts that have been running in her mind since she was a small child, dark wicked thoughts.  _ Grab the scissors and stab your teacher in the neck  _ had certainly been a popular thought during middle school. 

Her mind tells her to do all of these horrible things, and she is so tired of fighting back. The only thing keeping her in check is her love. It’s how deeply she cares about people, it's how she cannot stand to watch people suffer. She can never become a vampire-her humanity would be off on the first day.

Feeling too much is Josie Saltzman’s curse, but it’s also the only thing keeping everyone else safe. Her suffering, her pain, her numbness, they are all the price she pays for her loved ones. 

Lately, things have been too much for Josie. Too much school work, too much social interaction, too much numbness. She wants it to be over. She is so fucking tired, and just wants to rest. 

She wants to go into a coma and wake up with all of her problems fixed or even better never wake up at all. 

There is no tipping point, there is no moment that breaks her. She has been broken all along.

One day, she wakes up, writes a letter, and goes for a swim. 

  
  
  


\---

  
  


Hope has noticed that Josie has been acting weird-something is off about her. The siphon’s usual vibrant personality has been dulled down, her smiles rarely reach her eyes these days. At first, Hope really didn’t want to bother her. She knows she's going through a rough time. She expects nothing else after Dark Josie killed Lizzie and wreaked havoc, since no one can be expected to be okay after something like that.

Except apparently, she is the only one that seems to think that Alaric treats Josie like nothing had ever happened. He expects Josie to be fine, he expects her to act like everything is normal, like his daughter didn’t just go through something traumatic. He didn’t even treat her like a normal student- he just expected her to always be okay. 

And it made Hope’s blood boil. She wanted to grab Alaric, shake him and yell at him to wake up, to stop being a wannabe dad to her, and pay attention to his own kids, because he had thrown them into the ocean to teach them how to swim and they were drowning. 

Hope knew that Lizzie was making an effort. She loved her twin more than she loved herself. However, being around the person that had killed you and enjoyed it was painful and hard. So Hope understood why Lizzie couldn’t be there for Josie as much as she wanted to, she really did. 

None of this changed the fact that Hope has no idea how to help Josie. Not when Josie didn’t want her help in the first place, all she did was evade the tribrid’s attempts to talk and ask her how she was doing. Josie was a master at deception. Hope just needed time to figure out how to lower Josie’s defenses. She just needed time. 

Hope didn’t have time. 

It is a normal day, day 98 since the Dark Josie, not that she is keeping count. She has been looking for Josie for a while now, since she didn’t show up to class. They have a project for history together and Hope really wants to finish it today, plus hanging out with Josie always makes her feel happy. The brunette might just be her favorite person in the school. 

Lizzie hadn’t been in class either, so she figures the twins are probably skipping class together to do something fun or maybe they had both gotten sick at the same time, which had happened before. 

She goes to the kitchens first. If the twins are sick, they probably would want something to eat, and if they’re not, well, everyone loves snacks. The ones she gets aren’t exactly sick people food, but she has never been sick before so she doesn’t know exactly what you are supposed to feed a sick person. 

When she got to the twins’ room, Lizzie opened the door, looking sort of ill, so Hope figured her theory about the siphons being sick was correct. She was glad she had brought food. 

“Hi, Lizzie I was-” Before Hope could even finish her question, Lizzie was already answering.

“No Hope, I do not know where my sister is. Please tell me you have food? Otherwise, I will have to kick your ass out of here.” Lizzie sounded a little bit desperate. Hope figured no one had stopped by to see her and offer help. Alaric probably hadn't even noticed his kids were absent.

Instead of replying, Hope simply held out the food out to Lizzie, as if she were offering gifts to god. Lizzie snatched them out of Hope’s hands like her life depended on it- the amount of chips that were savagely shoved into her mouth is not something Hope thinks she will ever forget. 

“I actually think Josie mentioned something about going swimming. She has been out of it lately. I’m getting worried, she never skips class.” Lizzie’s voice is filled with concern, and some chewed up bits of potato chips. 

The moment Hope hears the word swimming, sirens go off in her head. Jo hates swimming, especially in the lake. Apparently it's too slimy. She would never go swimming, not like this. Something isn’t right-her anxiety is flaring up, her every instinct is screaming at her to do something, anything. 

Hope runs out of the room without even saying another word. Her eyes glow yellow, wolf fighting to take over, finding Josie is her only priority. 

Even before she reaches the lake her stomach drops, no good can come out of this. The whole thing feels eerily similar to how she felt when her parents died. Hope runs faster. 

She stops at the lake’s shores. At first glance, everything seems normal. Not many come out to swim at this time of year, it’s no surprise she's the only one at the lake. It makes the fact that Josie went out for a swim even stranger. 

The first thing Hope Mikaelson sees forces a sob out of her. There is a boot floating in the water-it’s one of Josie’s favorites. 

She jumps in the water without a second thought. It doesn’t even take much looking, her worst fears confirmed. She reaches Josie’s body almost effortlessly. In the back of her mind, she thinks that Josie looks beautiful and ethereal, even like this. 

She pulls Josie out of the water. She knows Josie is dead, she knows there is no coming back from this. She starts doing CPR with tears in her eyes anyways. Half an hour passes and she doesn’t stop, she can’t stop. She refuses to lose anyone else, refuses to lose the girl she is in love with. She cannot lose someone that could have been the epic love her mother talked about, she refused to let Josie become another ‘what could have been’. 

After an hour she stops doing CPR, her only hope (fuck Hope) is that Josie died with vampire blood in her system, that she had a reason to do this, a plan to come back to her. So she waits, she waits for hours. It is midnight at this point, no one has come looking for either of them. 

Too much time has passed. Josie is not coming back and Hope is all alone. 

She cannot cry anymore, all her tears have been dried up. She feels everything and nothing at the same time, the loss too big for her to process. Hope Mikaelson just lost a piece of her heart. She’s 19 and she has lost more than most people do in a lifetime. She doesn’t even think about how this will hurt for eternity, because that's what she has now, eternity alone and in pain. 

Hope Mikaleson kisses Josie Saltzman for the first and last time that night. She pours her everything into that kiss, the very essence of her soul. All her love and desperation goes into kissing lips that will never kiss her back. 

Explaining everything to Alaric and Lizzie becomes a blur. The only thing she is sure of is that she gave them the worst news of their lives, and she couldn't even be bothered to cry, to show emotion. It was all blank. 

It’s now 3 am, walking to her room feels surreal. She had done it so many times before and yet without Josie the world is so bleak. 

On her bed is a note and the talisman she had given Josie for her 16th birthday. The sight of it makes her knees buckle and before she knows it, she is on the ground. Josie had stopped wearing the talisman a while ago. Hope thought it was because she had finally learned how to make quiet things heard on her own. Now she knows it because Josie didn’t want to be heard. 

Opening the note is probably the hardest thing she has ever done. Her hands shake the whole time-these are Josie’s last words to her, one of the last things she did before taking her own life and Hope doesn’t know how to handle it.

_ ‘I woke up and wished that I was dead _

_ With an aching in my head  _

_ I lay motionless in bed _

_ I thought of you  _

_ And where you’d gone _

_ And let the world spin madly on’ _

She only reads the first couple lines before the note is going up in smoke. 

Hope’s only reaction is to laugh, she is uncontrollably laughing. At some point, those laughs slowly turn into sobs, because this time, it's her burning the note Josie sends before she could even read it. She likes to think this would piss off Josie a lot. She poured her heart and soul into that letter (maybe literally), and Hope would never read her final words, no one would even read them. That breaks Hope even more-she was just stupid and impulsive enough to destoy the last thing Josie intended for her to know. 

A part of her is glad, a part of her hates Josie so much she wants to rip everything about her to shreds, because how dare Josie do this to her, leave her in this world alone. A bigger part of her knows that that is bullshit. Josie was in pain and struggling and she saw dying as her only escape, and that breaks Hope’s heart more than anything. 

Hope feels about Josie like she feels about her parents. She loves them so much, that when they left her, a little piece of that love withered and became hatred. The people she loves most in the world are also the people she hates the most. 

Hope Andrea Mikaelson lays broken on the floor and a part of her wishes death was an option to her. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed that lol.
> 
> Part two of my other fanfic "twice the pain, the suffering, oh my love is unrequited" is coming soon, I just wanted to post this one first because it was a request made in gc. 
> 
> Please tell me what you think in the comments. 
> 
> Thank you to user allweneedofhell for being my beta you're the best. Go read their fics, they're fantastic. 
> 
> Also if you want you can listen to this amazing playlist my friend made based on this fic https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4tS5CPRJaC7Q1io1mAu1h8?si=66KnAACYSLihVpSezbnY6Q
> 
> Follow me on twitter @DXNYARYA


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